38 replies to this topic

[Ultrabeast]

Kutagh, on 31 October 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

@Ultrabeast: Luckily those 'crazies' aren't posting in this topic And as for EVE, that 'new player experience', I didn't have the time nor was I that interested to do so... Plus obviously the subscription cost and I didn't get very far into the beta

Yeah early on Eve was pretty hardcore. Had to spend a couple months to p1mp out a ship, then lose half that playtime if you hit a patch of lag or bad pirate warp, or someone that had resists to all your damage type.

Edited by Ultrabeast, 31 October 2012 - 12:41 PM.

[Spectre999]

I've just started playing yesterday, so here's some impressions on accessibility.


Overall, the trial mech idea works pretty well. You can test how different weight classes behave, and earn some money in the process. One quickly discovers that you get more money by being trying to be useful, people tend to be helpful and answer questions if you have them. It's a crash course, but I enjoyed the process.
I also found that sticking around in spectator mode is a nice way to learn the ropes.

It can get frustrating if one expects easy success, multiple kills and boom headshots, obviously mechwarrior is not for everyone and I'm perfectly fine with that.

I have a few gripes:

(o) Trial mechs could use a bit more weapon variety. None has any advanced systems, all have LRMs, lots of lazers, and very few ballistic weapons. The loadouts are pretty enjoyable to play, but I think they could show the game features a bit more.

(o) Lacking descriptions in the MechLab, I'm not asking for much, just range and damage on weapons would be a big help. If I wasn't a long time Mechwarrior fan, I don't think I would know what's the difference between Laser and ER Laser, or whatever is this LBX thing.

(o) Maps, there's not many of them, but as a beginner I found them pretty confusing at first - the random matchmaking kept jerking me from one map to another and it took me a while to get the lay of the land.

While the game is fine as far as betas go, I think the final version could use some kind of a free-roam mode, for the player to practice target shooting, mech controls and test the weapons before buying.

[Leetskeet]

If you don't have some one to teach you how to play, no. Not even close.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

I've now learned that they're not talking about access; they're talking about "understandability".(Why they didn't just type that, I don't know)

Regarding that however; it is indeed a rough start. They did finally make a tutorial video... but that's about it. None of my other good suggestions made it to launch. There's still no solo mode you can fool around with to test controls or target practice. I suggested such, "training room", "training ground", whatever you want to call it. It would be an area to drop in and move/shoot/edit controls and get into this game before being destroyed by a veteran with 200 games of experience. It would not grant rewards so I don't see the issue in inventing it. Another thing I suggested that is really important is the ability to CHANGE controls while IN a match. This is a serious issue because it means you have to forcibly leave an active PvP match(Making it 7vs8 for your team) in order to drop back to the menu to change something. Other games almost always have both of these things. Even Hawken has a tutorial in its beta right now. It's nothing special... but it exists.

[Yokaiko]

redplauge, on 31 October 2012 - 04:15 AM, said:

you know... those are some intresting points.

i do think newbs should start with a non trial mech. and have a toutorial to get info on how to play, vids arnt always the same as an ingame little deal.

Yeah they would love the reprair rearm bill, no really they would.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Yokaiko, on 31 October 2012 - 01:30 PM, said:

Yeah they would love the reprair rearm bill, no really they would.

You make more than you lose. Also, you can customize them. Having to grind in Trials where you can't edit weapons/sinks to your liking is really a drag. If they weren't going to let users edit Trials then they shouldn't have been forced into them. They should have been optional... as in, skippable or entirely up to you. Players should have started out with enough C-Bills for at least a Medium Mech so they can grab a common workhorse Hunch/Cent right out of the gate to call their own or have the option to bank it and grind for higher.

[RumRunner151]

Its open beta. Changes are coming as stated here: http://mwomercs.com/...-command-chair/

Try a little patience.

[Ghosth]

I guess you could say the current setup is a "front loaded" grind.

You have to spend the time in trial mechs gaining the Cbills before you can buy your own mech.

That might not be such a bad thing, the problem really is those mechs are not designed for the way heat works here.
So they tend to run very hot.

You can play for free, but you have to be willing to put in the time first, hence front loaded.

Personally I think MWO would keep more customers if they went to more of a rear loaded setup.

Give everyone starting a light mech to start with. Let them use trials to explore the different weapons and chassis. Let them use the mechlab right off the bat.

Set it up as a loan which has to be paid back over time.

[Kutagh]

So I just introduced a buddy of mine to MWO. His first round went reasonably well, we had a decent team that worked together and as I told him about the weapons and such, how to play etc, he did enjoy his first round... Perhaps that is something we could introduce as well, a 'Buddy' system where new players are assigned a veteran (veterans are opt-in) and the veteran groups with the new player (or even a group of new players), tells them about the mechs and which trial mech they should try out, as well as how to play.

[Yokaiko]

Bluten, on 31 October 2012 - 01:33 PM, said:

You make more than you lose. Also, you can customize them. Having to grind in Trials where you can't edit weapons/sinks to your liking is really a drag. If they weren't going to let users edit Trials then they shouldn't have been forced into them. They should have been optional... as in, skippable or entirely up to you. Players should have started out with enough C-Bills for at least a Medium Mech so they can grab a common workhorse Hunch/Cent right out of the gate to call their own or have the option to bank it and grind for higher.

I have to disagree. Before the wipe I was screwing around with a -9M in ten games even though I only actually got cored once I only made something like 300,000 over that span and I won I think 6 of those games.

.....Even with a relatively stock commando you are talking making MAYBE 20k on a loss, and is if you know to turn off auto-reload.

Kutagh, on 01 November 2012 - 06:40 AM, said:

So I just introduced a buddy of mine to MWO. His first round went reasonably well, we had a decent team that worked together and as I told him about the weapons and such, how to play etc, he did enjoy his first round... Perhaps that is something we could introduce as well, a 'Buddy' system where new players are assigned a veteran (veterans are opt-in) and the veteran groups with the new player (or even a group of new players), tells them about the mechs and which trial mech they should try out, as well as how to play.

Sure.

[Angel of Annihilation]

I am not going to read the entire post but 90% of the newbie complaints aren't real.

First if your a true newbie, how do you really even have an opinion that the trial mechs are unbalanced? I mean what is your frame of reference? Your new, you haven't played anything but a trial so how do you know that a custom mech is better?

No they are newbies reading the forums and reacting to the old beta testers comments that trials aren't balanced so therefore because they aren't skilled, it must be the unbalanced mechs.

No as far as the learning curve, yes that is brutal, especially since the new people are dropping in against founders wtih up to a couple thousand matches under their belt. Also mech customization isn't intuitive and even as a founder, you need to use a good 3rd party program to plan your builds, especially with the drastic increase in equipment prices making experimentation very costly.

However, we are still in developmental beta so this is a pretty standard situation. The issue is that the industry standard definition of Open Beta is that OB means a "Demo" or "Try before you buy" period so alot of new players don't realize what they are getting into which leads to alot of negativity.

Also it takes roughly 3 hours of play to get your first mech. I am not sure what other MMOs these people are playing but 3 hours is nothing.

[Imagine Dragons]

Not entierly on topic but I had a little idea tossing in my head.

Instead of just 4 variants, one from each weight class for the trial mechs...

Why not 4 chasis one from each weight class and ALL of the variants?

Maybe not now, but in the future where we have more unique chasis available...

[Yokaiko]

They do change the trials every patch, and have a plan to do a rotation.

So if you are patient they should change next week.

[Kutagh]

@Viktor Drake: If you did read the entire post, you'd see that I'm looking from both sides of the story, both veteran and newbie and actually reason why and such. And I did identify a core issue with the trial mechs, namely the fact that they're based on TT values and assumptions regarding accuracy and such, while the mechanics have changed, which means that some trial mechs are running hotter than the original TT design was intended to and as I said, it is both a curse and a blessing. The curse being a steeper learning curve, but the blessing being that once it is mastered, they should be reasonably competitive with players by not running a 'heat neutral' build but a build that maximizes firepower while trying to avoid overheating.

And as for '3 hours of play before your first mech': A core feature that has been boasted about for MWO is the customization of mechs. Having to 'grind' a couple million C-Bills before you can even own a mech, never mind actually customizing it, means that new players don't have anything to distract them from a difficult start, regularly being in a match where they're overrun by experienced players. All they're doing is learning the game in an unfriendly environment without anything to distract them from it as all they can do is switch between trial mechs. I don't think I'd enjoy enduring that for 3 hours and a first impression is important if you want players to stay.
For that, I proposed a system which requires a couple matches to be played in a certain trial mech before they can get a mortgage on that trial mech, which offers them earlier access to actually owning a mech, but losing a fair amount of their income to the mortgage to pay off the mech meaning that they can't customize it a lot quickly, forcing them to slowly change the mech and thus not massively change how the mech plays. So even if they're not doing well, they have the opportunity to check the mechlab, see how they could possibly customize their mech and find out what weapons are available (and later hopefully can already see the stats of other weapons that they encountered).

@XenomorphZZ: While that is a good idea for experienced players, you have to realize the actual purpose of the trial mechs: To ease new players into the game, as well as offering an opportunity for everyone to try out a mech chassis before buying it. New players don't know which mech configurations are good and so having on average 4 variants per chassis with 4 chassis' available means that they have to pick something from 16 options instead of 4, which is confusing for them and means that they'll switch more often between some variants meaning that they don't really gain experience in a certain variant of mech, while they actually need to first learn how to pilot one certain variant.

Edited by Kutagh, 01 November 2012 - 07:34 AM.

[Casus125]

I'm a total noob to MW. I can sum up my entire MW experience prior to this quite sadly: I played Mechwarrior on my Super Nintendo (But I enjoyed the hell out of it, which gave me a fondness for the series)

I'm not new to F2P: I played League of Legends for almost 2 years and Tribes: Ascend for about 9. As well as various spatterings here and there through the past few years.

I'm really enjoying MWO, but the grind for credits at the beginning is pretty exhausting. Now, I'm smarter than the average bear, I actually...read forums and guides and crazy nerd **** like that. I feel like I have a pretty solid grasp of the fundamentals of the gameplay now, but my biggest beef is that I just don't feel competitive in a Trial mech. I contribute, for sure, but i feel like a dead weight compared to custom mechs in my class.

Conservatively, but mildly optimistic, I earn, on average, 70k a match. I'm looking to buy a hunchback, and at 3.9 million, that's over 50 games just to buy the frame. I figure I'll spend 8-10 hours of grinding just to get my FIRST mech. I'll need even more if I want to do the apparent smart thing, which is actually build up purchase price + repair cushion.

Now, I don't even have a clue as to what repair costs look like after a match, but I'm sure I'm developing bad habits seeing as I blow up almost every match.

(Side note: Maybe show ALL the costs associated with running a mech, even when in a trial, just to give new players a sense of how much it would cost to operate any given mech, especially if the trials are going to be rotating, this would let all players get a fuller sense of what it would take to operate any given frame. You can keep trial mech rewards the same, but showing ALL the information would be nice to have a fuller grasp of the game)

I really, really, really like the idea of putting a new player through some trials and giving them a free/reduced cost mech. The 5/5/5/5 get a free mech just sounds like a great, one time hook to get people in the door and enjoying themselves.

8-10 hours, and 50~ matches isn't a bad target number for normal game flow. But starting off, some kind of a boost is necessary to set the hook, and, more importantly, to FEEL competitive.

In T:A you can be a competitive force on the battlefield in a fresh account, in LoL the rotating roster is diversified enough, and there are enough low cost champs is enough to give yourself some kind of a decent roster to play with. Even more so with 8-10 hours of gameplay under your belt.

In MWO, I feel like I'm grinding, and grinding, and grinding, just to finally be able to enjoy the game. I feel handicapped in my trial mechs.

I'll probably slog on through, but if you're looking to get casuals in to boost the population, you need to give to get a carrot on a stick, and you need to start dangling it right away.

Edited by Casus125, 01 November 2012 - 07:57 AM.

[Kutagh]

Well... there is a carrot dangling on a stick. The stick is just on the other side of the road...

Another issue that I think will currently make the game less accessible as well is that while the detailed information is difficult to find, the mechanics can suddenly change too. For example the jamming mechanic of UAC/5 is likely to be changed but you need to either find it out by accident or hear from other players how it works. Or the fact that DHS is going from 2 to 1.4 making some goals suddenly less desirable... People spent C-bills and MC on mechs already in order to achieve a specific build and then something changes that makes the build just not attractive anymore. If that keeps happening, why would I continue playing anyway if most of my goals are useless, which means that I don't have a real goal anymore?
Keep in mind that there's a difference between a build having certain inherent problems (such as PPCs + LRMs requiring a minimum range of 90/180m) that makes it in reality not as good as you initially thought and actually the mechanics changing while you're working towards that build that makes the build suddenly significantly harder to execute. Experimentation is part of Battletech/MWO but for that you need a solid foundation that doesn't change significantly.

[Tardstrong]

I don't know why I can't launch a tutorial from my computer to learn the basics.
Chat channels to connect newbs with vets should be easy to set up.
For trials I think smaller maps in a 4v4 match would be better to learn on rather than 16 players on a large map. Especially 16 new players doing whatever.

[Kutagh]

@Tardstrong:
If 4v4 is going to be implemented for new players, it'll need a specific map for that as well. Considering the rate at which they're developing maps currently, this would take a while... But indeed a 4v4 would allow new players to train more effectively, as they're less likely to be overwhelmed. However, the downside is that support mechs are less useful as there are already few mechs to assist...

[Tardstrong]

Would it be possible to use chunks of current maps? Aren't they fairly balanced in the center where areas were designed to be fought?

As there are 4 trial mechs, perhaps a slot could be open for one of each mech? This could keep the number of support mechs where they should be. If the Trial Mech gods look favorably on us I guess.

Having a vet team with a newb in a trial game over TS would go a long way of explaining/showing how roles work.